Just 2 genes give butterfly wings their stripes and color
A pair of master genes control the complex traits in butterfly wingsone for colors and iridescence and the other for stripe patterns, two new papers suggest. It seems like a small number of genes disproportionately drive evolution over and over again. In the first paper, scientists describe using CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology to break the gene, after which the butterflies wings became black and white.